What is a dialectical thought?
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So we’ve all seen the term ‘dialectical thought’ floating around…
It’s a bit like when you stumble onto a sub that’s about some thing that you never knew existed, and at first, it seems weird and confusing.
Dialectical thought basically means thinking in a way that isn’t just black and white, but appreciates the grays and colors in between too. Imagine you’ve wandered into post or thread where people are going at it over whether pineapple belongs on pizza. One side is absolutely convinced that pineapple is an abomination and ruins the pizza, while the other side is passionately defending pineapple as the best thing since sliced bread.
A person thinking dialectically wouldn’t just blindly pick a side. They’d say, “Hey, maybe pineapple on pizza is heavenly for some folks, and maybe it’s hellish for others. And that’s okay. There’s room for both in this big ol’ pizza world.”
Basically, it’s about recognizing that different viewpoints can exist together, even if they seem contradictory. It’s the mental version of scrolling through a thread, upvoting both sides of an argument because they make good points, and not needing to decide that one is THE RIGHT ANSWER.
TIP: Next time you’re in the middle of a debate, try on some dialectical thinking. It’s like putting on 3D glasses – suddenly you see depths and angles you didn’t notice before, and everything gets a whole lot more interesting.
Edit: Typo, Readability.
**In short, dialectical thought is seeing things from multiple perspectives,** and especially being able to make sense of both of those perspectives at once. It’s the realization that things that are seemingly opposites can be “and,” not “or.”
In much of the world of academics — and especially philosophy — “dialectics” refers to the process of considering or arguing multiple points of view and perspectives, and then coming to the most suitable and reasonable conclusion.
Marsha Linehan, a prominent psychologist, has described dialectics as “a synthesis or integration of opposites,” which I find a useful definition.
**Part of why the terms “dialectics” and “dialectical thinking” are confusing is that different fields use them in different ways.** Marx uses the term differently than the ancient Greeks, who uses the term differently than modern philosophers. If you talk about dialectics in a psychology class vs. a philosophy class vs. a sociology class, you’ll get slightly different definitions, and see these words used as different parts of speech.
But it always relates to/comes back to this idea of considering multiple perspectives.
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